Reports: N. Korea behind cyber attack

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The North Korean government was the source of high-profile cyber attacks in July that caused Web outages in South Korea and the United States, news reports said today.

The IP address — the Web equivalent of a street address or phone number — that triggered the Web attacks was traced back to North Korea’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the chief of South Korean’s main spy agency reportedly told lawmakers.

The ministry leased the IP address from China, Won Sei-hoon of the National Intelligence Service told lawmakers yesterday, JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency carried a similar report.

The July attacks, in which floods of computers tried to connect to a single Web site at the same time to overwhelm the server, caused outages on prominent government-run sites in the United States and South Korea. Affected sites include those of the White House and the South’s presidential Blue House.